Monitoring of the ductile to brittle transition temperature of reactor pressure vessel steels by means of small specimens

Abstract

Neutron irradiation in nuclear power plants (NPPs) lead to microstructural changes in structural materials which induce a shift of the ductile to brittle transition temperature (DBTT) towards higher temperatures. Monitoring of the DBTT in NPP components receives therefore considerable attention. Small specimen testing techniques are developed for characterizing structural components with a limited amount of materials. One of the most used of these miniature testing is the small punch test (SPT) which is based on disc or square shaped specimens. SPTs may be performed from room to cryogenic temperatures, plotting the absorbed energy until rupture, against the test temperature. A ductile region (high energy) and a brittle region (low energy) with a transition between both zones are usually reported. The transition temperature thus obtained, DBTTSPT, is also related through empirical expressions to the transition temperature obtained in CVN tests, DBTTCVN, or in fracture toughness testing. Linear expressions such as DBTTSPT = α DBTTCVN have been used where α is a material characteristic constant. In all cases, the DBTTSPT temperature is much lower than that obtained in the CVN tests. In this paper, we present a short review of the literature on the determination of the DBTT for nuclear reactors pressure vessels steels by those two techniques analyzing the reason for the difference in their value as mentioned before. In dealing with irradiated materials, is a high priority to limit the exposure of the professional to irradiation. Therefore, the use of miniature specimens receives significant attention in the nuclear community. The high cost of irradiation experiments is a further incentive for using small specimen testing techniques.